Malcolm margolin biography

If you’ve ever browsed the gift shop of a California state park, historical site, or museum, you’ve seen Malcolm Margolin’s work. Books published by Heyday, the publishing company he started in 1974, include landmark volumes on California’s history, natural environment, and native culture. You probably have one or two on your shelves right now. Over the last forty years, despite considerable financial pressure, Heyday has become what the San Francisco author Rebecca Solnit calls “the glue that holds the sweetest parts of California together.”

Malcolm Margolin (photo courtesy of Heyday)

Margolin started Heyday in 1974 with the publication of the classic hiking guide The East Bay Out, inspired by his work as a groundskeeper for the East Bay Regional Parks District. Last year, to mark the 40th anniversary of the press, Heyday published a paean to its founder, The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher. Edited by the Berkeley author Kim Bancroft, the book is ostensibly a biography of Margolin, but it turns out to much more. It begins with several fascinating chapters about Malcolm’s upbringing in a working-class Jewish neighborhood of Boston, his unhappy tenure as an undergrad at Harvard, and his wild adventures in Puerto Rico, New York, and finally Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s. Bancroft structures the book like an oral history. Passages narrated by Margolin alternate with testimonies from friends, associates, and family members. We come to know Malcolm the husband, Malcolm the father, and Malcolm the loyal friend.

But one avatar looms above all the others: Malcolm the Fiercely Independent Publisher. We learn how Margolin started Heyday in the living room of a rented house in Berkeley, with boxes of books tucked under the beds and behind every door. Eventually the company moved to a ramshackle old office building on University Avenue, where fellow tenants included The M

Malcolm Margolin is executive director of Heyday, an independent nonprofit publisher and unique cultural institution, which he founded in 1974. Margolin is author of several books, including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer. He has received dozens of prestigious awards among which are the Fred Cody Award Lifetime Achievement from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Helen Crocker Russell Award for Community Leadership from the San Francisco Foundation, the Carey McWilliams Award for Lifetime Achievement from the California Studies Association, an Oscar Lewis Award for Western History from the Book Club of California, a Hubert Bancroft Award from Friends of the Bancroft Library, a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He serves on the boards of two organizations he helped found, Bay Nature Institute and Alliance for California Traditional Artists.

Reviews

''[An] adventurous, insightful, and delightful saga of storytelling.'' Midwest Book Review

''Malcolm Margolin has spent a lifetime bringing the California legend to life. He has brought our unrivaled diversity of native languages, cultures, species, and habitats into our hands and imaginations. There's no greater tribute to the man than what he's inspired us to save.'' Mike Sweeney, executive director, The Nature Conservancy

''Kim Bancroft here elegantly wrestles into flowing prose the joyous intellect, the contagious spirit, and the rapturous soul of Malcolm Margolin. Sharing the poignant path of this passionate publisher and community builder, Bancroft gives us all the gifts that are Malcolm and all that he has shared about this place we call California.'' Anthea M. Hartig, executive director, California Historical Society

''Reading Malcolm's story here--and reading others' stories about Malcolm--put me in the presence of the wonderful, brilliant, and kindhearted man that I've known and cherished. What a treasure!''

''If you don't yet know Malcolm, prepare yourself to meet the uncle you wish you had, the glue that holds the sweetest parts of California together, and some very hilarious picaresque adventures amid this still-golden state.'' Rebecca Solnit, author of The Faraway Nearby

''Malcolm Margolin should be bronzed (if it wouldn't hurt). He and Heyday are treasures beyond computation, bringing to light authors and issues that too many overlook or ignore. On top of that, he's a wise and kindly man and in this degenerate age his perspective should have the widest possible audience. Read this book. You won't be disappointed.'' Peter Coyote

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Malcolm Margolin (born October 27, 1940) is an author, publisher, and former executive director of Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, California. From his founding of Heyday in 1974 until his retirement at the end of 2015, he oversaw the publication of several hundred books and the creation of two quarterly magazines: News from Native California, devoted to the history and ongoing cultural concerns of California Indians, and Bay Nature, devoted to the natural history of the San Francisco Bay Area. In the fall of 2017, he established a new enterprise, the California Institute for Community, Art, and Nature (California ICAN) to continue and expand upon the work that he began more than forty years ago.

Margolin is the author/editor of several books including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer. His essays and articles have appeared in a number of periodicals including The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times.

Early life and education

Margolin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27, 1940 to a Lithuanian mother and an American father. He attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, where he earned a degree in English Literat